I know Taslima Nasreen from what I have read in the newspapers and especially the incident at Hyderabad where she was attacked and had to be rescued. And ofcourse from the twitter world where she keeps talking as an independent voice unfettered by trolls whichever religion they may belong to.

I now know the reason why she is fiercely independent or rather she has her reasons and she perhaps lives to exemplify those statements that she makes unlike the so called liberals who she has called out in this book who take refuge of the situations and then give enough excuses on why they cant take a stand or show having a spine.

Reading the preface in the book gives us enough of how this book has come to life. It perhaps is the way with all her other books too. Thanks to the translator, I am sure this must have been a challenge in a way as much for the author.

The title should have been hard one for Taslima since you cant be in exile in your country and worse in the place that you wanted to be back ‘home’ and how that can be shattered by politics and fundamentalism.

The book spares no one in this narration of events that lead to her exile and how she was lost in time if I can put it that way. If there is a place called nowhere probably thats where the people wanted her to go.

I am for the first time taking a political stand on a book and a review probably I am at odds with what the left liberals have done to the fabric of the country and no one needs to read anything else than this book to show their hypocrisy. A stark reality of how even the media is hand in glove with liberals when they cant take criticism or feel like offended is glaringly revealed with the way they held themselves outsing Taslima from Calcutta the now Kolkatta.

Fundamentalism doesnt have a religion its got only a reason to be what it is.

The book is got different styles and it takes time to get into the groove, simply because the events described there are so much of disturbance and those we didn’t know first hand. Some places the narrative changes to poetry and then to instances given as it is in a dialogue format a part of diary which the author had.

I would recommend this book for its retelling of our times from a perspective of a free woman and will help understand the psyche of the world when it comes to fighting truth and the uglyness it creates in the society on its own.

My admiration for translated version have gone up considerably after reading this book and kudos to the translator for having done a fabulous job here.

The book lovers have a new tool, well a page on their book section on their favorite shopping app from folks at Flipkart. The book was the first love of flipkart, well things have changed but then they have tried to please you the book reader with this page!

“What India Reads” is all about what you read or would like to read. The app is designed basis genres for now and will soon feature what celebrities and authors read as well.

The idea of the app is to make readers aware of what books are right at the top and also to help them discover books they might have not known of earlier. There are sections to it, the genres and you could check out the books on the shelf, read about it and well get to buy them ofcourse.

The chances are you can check out the best of the titles and the promising ones, as you see the title rise to prominence in a day or so post launch.

There is an all book offers that will let you know what are the offers that you have at the present moment.

I was wondering on a title Aarushi under Autobiographies, may be it was a a mistake so i clicked on it to find the Autobiography titles there. Not Aarushi.

The pages instead of going to normal pages at Flipkart could be better be designed to the flow of the app interface for the What India reads page and continue with the shopping experience. I am thinking native probably because of my work and professional background.

Another aspect could have been that they have a notification for you to check the What India reads page updation of new titles so that I get to go there quite often.

A nice attempt from Flipkart, hope it helps the readers in you and me and as a start it definitely looks nice to have it.

Its not even a full week since the entry of Amazon in the guise of Junglee.com in India. Now comes the news that Flipkart has decided to buy out Letsbuy.com! courtesy MediaNama.com. That comes as a big surprise since the two were competitors and Letsbuy was another e-commerce which was in the race. It was clearly the No.2 in the absence of any big names making a dent in the market place.

This development brings us to a very important issue of scale and size especially considering the fact that Amazon once it gets the customers to Junglee.com can always roll out the Amazon Indian version and the Indian consumers will be more than happy to embrace the services.

What Amazon has done in the ecosystem is to consolidate the competition especially the No. 1 and No. 2 and make them a bigger entity in terms of size and service and more so in terms of products. It should also be noted how they are at different spectrum with respect to product portfolios.

Letsbuy has been into electronics and has had a loyal customer base while Flipkart starting with books has been on a roller coaster ride till ofcourse Junglee was launched. @madmanweb was quoted as saying he was waiting for Flipkart to sell groceries! Like I had mentioned in my earlier blog its interesting times for the Indian e-commerce industry and that has already started!

As we witness the competition on one side, the consolidation of the industry will separate the serious big players from the me-too brands in the e-commerce sphere.